A Fine Passion by Stephanie Laurens (Avon)

Reviewed by blake on June 15th, 2008, 7:27am

by Stephanie Laurens

Format: Print Books

Series: Other

Julius (Jack) Warneflett, the Baron Warnefleet, is almost home after a very long absence where, shortly before he reaches the entry to his home, he encounters an overturned phaeton and a lady trying to calm a very agitated horse.  He saves the lady, Lady Clarice Atwood, from injury from said horse but gets hit in the head again right over his previous injury. The owner of the phaeton is unconscious and at the ladies direction they move him to the manner house down the road.  Jack does not let it known that he is the absentee owner until the house is reached. In the meantime he learns that in his absence, and at the death of his father, the necessary decisions normally made by the manners owner were being made by a local personage in his stead. Jack also doesn’t correct Clarice’s mistaken ideas as to his character.  Things are running very well and when he learns Clarice has been handling things tries at first, to his aggravation, to take over managing all that Clarice had taken on in his stead.  It is agreed, after Jack acknowledges Clarice’s successful past decision making, to share the duties and to take things as they come. When the unconscious owner of the overturned carriage wakes and delivers the message he was carrying for Clarice’s relative, together with Clarice’s account of said carriage being run off the road and the seeming almost attempt on the unconscious owners life, Jack and Clarice journey together to London to try and clear up the tangled mystery that ensues.

This is a Bastion Club novel, my first in this series.  I very much enjoyed this book and am sure to like the series if I read them (but I knew that before I started this book).  Clarice is a wonderful lady with a definite mind of her own and a very sensible head on her shoulders.  Jack is very much his own man and is deeper than at first glance he might seem to others.  Jack is very suited to Clarice and vice versa.  I liked that they both were of one mind in a lot of their thoughts, even though they went against the current political correctness. The initial problem is cleared up but the one remaining mystery is still there to be solved, or brought up, in future books in this series.

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Use the talents you have, for the woods would by silent if no birds sang except the best. (from a flip inspiration book-'Thoughts for my daughter')